As a medicine feeding unit, a “tablet feeder” disclosed in Patent Literature 1 or a “medicine feeder” disclosed in Patent Literature 2, for example, can be mentioned. These medicine feeding units basically include a medicine container (which is described as a “tablet container case” in Patent Literature 1 and as a “container” in Patent Literature 2; the terms in the parentheses in the “Background” below are the names of members disclosed in Patent Literature 1 or 2) that contains solid medicines, and a substantially cylindrical rotor that is rotatably located inside the medicine container. This rotor rotates about the vertical axis. As the rotor rotates, medicines can be sequentially ejected from a medicine outlet (opening in Patent Literature 1) provided in the medicine container. The ejected medicines are fed, for example, to a packaging device.
Patent Literature 1 discloses that a medicine container (tablet container case) is attached to or detached from a support by being moved in the horizontal direction. Then, a rotation gear located on the medicine container side is configured to mesh with a drive gear located on the support side when the medicine container is mounted onto the support. Such meshing allows a driving force to be transmitted from the support to the medicine container. Each gear is a spur gear and the meshing is performed from the lateral side of the gear.
Patent Literature 2 discloses that a medicine container (container) is attached to or detached from a support (drive unit) by being moved in the vertical direction. When the medicine container is mounted onto the support, a fitting member located on the medicine container side is fitted to a fitting member located on the support side from above. This fitting allows a driving force to be transmitted from the support to the medicine container.
However, in the invention disclosed in Patent Literature 1, the meshing may be incomplete in some cases, if the positional accuracy between the gears is low when the medicine container is mounted onto the support. Then, there are cases where the driving force cannot be transmitted to the rotor, so that the rotor does not rotate, and the tablets cannot be ejected from the medicine container.
Further, in the invention disclosed in Patent Literature 2, since the fitting is achieved in the vertical direction, the driving force is transmitted when the medicine container is mounted onto the support, even if the positional accuracy is low to some extent. However, in the case where medicine containers are arranged to be vertically stacked, a space for moving the medicine containers vertically needs to be ensured between two supports that are vertically located, when the medicine containers are attached or detached, in addition to the gap with the vertical dimension of the medicine container. Therefore, there is a problem that downsizing of the medicine feeding unit in the vertical direction is difficult, so that the arrangement density in the vertical direction of the medicine containers is reduced.